


before we sleep

by inabathrobe



Category: Swordspoint Series - Ellen Kushner
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-20
Updated: 2014-12-20
Packaged: 2018-03-02 08:59:20
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,510
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2806904
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/inabathrobe/pseuds/inabathrobe
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Richard couldn't read, but he was fairly certain that Alec was holding his book upside down.</p>
            </blockquote>





	before we sleep

**Author's Note:**

  * For [noeon (noe)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/noe/gifts).



> Set loosely post- _Swordspoint_.

He woke Marie up to get into the house, and she did not waste time gaping at him, covered in blood as he was, just told him to take off his boots and shooed him into the courtyard. He tried to wave her off as she went toward the well, sending her back to bed.

"You can help yourself —after you've washed your hands," Marie snapped. "But if you get blood on the rope, you'll get blood in the well, and I'm not having that." She hauled up a bucket of water for him, her hands dry and cracked and red from taking in laundry (harder work than whoring but more dependable, too). She set it before him. "Once it's not too filthy, try to use it to wash the cobblestones."

He bent down and stuck his hands into the water. It was bitterly cold and clouded over red as soon as his hands touched it. When they were nearly clean, he poured the bucket out over the sometime-vegetable garden, still barren from winter, and dropped the bucket back into the well, pulling out fresh water. This, he splashed onto his face and forearms before pulling off his shirt and starting in on the drying blood caked onto it, water sloshing over the edges of the bucket and nearly soaking the clean laundry drying in the sun.

"You watch where you're getting that water!" Marie shouted at him.

"Sorry, sorry."

"You will be sorry when you stain everything I've just washed." She was trying to sound cross, but mostly, he just heard her exhaustion.

"Go to bed. I'll be careful," he called back. As he shouted, he heard window shutters slap open, and he determinedly did not look up to see which of his neighbors he'd woken.

"Richard," Alec, his drawling voice unmistakable at least in Riverside, called down, scarcely louder than if he were at table. "You're home late."

So late it was early again. "I was working," as though it were not obvious.

"You're a mess."

He was. Richard’s hands were still stained red. He looked up at him.

Alec was perched on the window ledge, long legs demurely crossed, his sleep-mussed hair clinging to his bare shoulders and the sweat on his forehead. He was naked. "Get inside," Richard said evenly.

"Ah, but I'm watching the show."

"Not much of a show," Richard said.

"The Most Tragic Comedy of the Swordsman Laundress is a favorite of mine, actually."

"Please, get down from the window," Richard said, voice soft and coaxing.

Alec leaned against one side of it and cocked his head like a spaniel who had just stolen a leg of lamb from his master's table. "Richard," he said, "are you worried?"

He licked his lips, mouth gone dry. No, he wanted to say. No. After all this time, he could calmly watch Alec sit in the window, surely. He stripped off the remainder of his clothes, diligently setting the blood-spattered ones in the bucket to soak —which were, as it turned out, most of them. The rest he left beside them to fetch later.

Alec met him on the threshold, holding the door open, limned with morning light. His feet were bare on the old wood floor. Richard crossed to him, bent his head down, pressed his hands to Alec's pale cheeks where they left watery red-pink marks.

"Any good?" he asked.

"You would have enjoyed it," Richard had to admit.

Alec's tongue darted out, licked at his thumb. Alec's eyes fluttered shut for a moment. "I can imagine."

"Can you just," Richard murmured. He leaned in to kiss him, and Alec's skin smelled like sweat and his old books, moldering and leathery, and Alec curled his arms around him, but after a moment, Richard slid away, out of Alec's embrace.

Alec, eyes hooded, drawled, "If you stop to put that sword away, I swear I'll shove it up your ass."

"Riverside has made you crude, my lord," Richard snapped.

It was a mistake. The warmth in Alec's expression disappeared, and something shuttered there. "That," Alec said, mimicking the Riverside accent that neither of them had, "and other things."

"And what are those?" Richard said, trying to coax him back out, but Alec would have none of it. He flinched back from Richard's hand where it brushed his arm and withdrew to the chaise longue, pointedly picking up an enormous book and their awful pest of a cat and settling himself there.

Richard, deciding to let him alone, went and cleaned his blade, wiping the browning blood from it, stubborn as anything (though perhaps not as stubborn as Alec). He made himself be careful about it, taking his time, until the sword was gleaming. No good to let it go to rust. He hung it on the wall where it belonged. Richard went and toasted himself a slice of bread with some hard old cheese on it over the dying embers of last night's fire. He ate it leaning against the mantelpiece, feeling Alec's glower against his back. It left him feeling less hollow inside, washing away the sticky memory of blood, pushing back the ache of sleeplessness.

He glanced over at Alec. Richard couldn't read, but he was fairly certain that Alec was holding his book upside down. "Alec."

No answer.

"Alec?"

He did not move on the chaise, eyes locked on the book he was pretending to read. The cat yawned brazenly and curled up smaller, tucking its nose into Alec's chest. Richard crossed the room, his bare feet cold on the floor, and knelt beside him. "Alec." He pried Alec's long fingers off the red leather, holding his hand out to press a kiss to his wrist. He kissed the tip of each resisting finger until Alec's hand relaxed, soft and pliant against Richard's calloused fingers. Alec pressed the back of his hand to Richard's cheek, feigning carelessness, but Richard could feel him scrape the Tremontaine signet ring across his cheek, every edge of the absurd ruby and the sharp little diamonds prickling against his skin.

"I'm reading," Alec said without any real rancor in it. His face was still held in its stately mask, the face that Richard associated with their occasional but ever unpleasant brushes with the Duchess, but warmth was lurking behind it again now.

Richard kissed the back of Alec's hand, then the ruby, light and courtly.

"Are you swearing fealty?" Alec ostentatiously withdrew his hand from Richard’s grasp, licked one fingertip, and turned his page. "I thought you didn't take on bodyguard work, St Vier."

Richard laughed. How often had he kept Alec from being killed in Riverside? "If I did, it certainly wouldn't be for you." Alec scoffed. "Far too much work, for one. I'd spend all my time answering challenges for you."

"You already do that," Alec said smugly. (And fed and clothed and watered him and put a roof over his head.) "Who knew you came so cheap?"

Richard shrugged. "The House Tremontaine has ever been good to me."

Alec snorted. "Is that what you call Grandmama trying to make you spy on me every third week?"

Taking the book out of Alec's hands, Richard set it down on the floor. Alec did not complain. "The Duchess has very little to do with it." He brushed aside a couple strands of hair that had come loose from Alec's ponytail. "Maybe, I just like their swans."

"Swans are ornery, loathsome creatures," Alec said, "and very violent in the bargain."

"I love swans."

And Alec smiled. "Swans don't like anyone."

"Now, that's just not true." Richard swatted the cat away, and Alec did not object. Richard tilted Alec up against him, half pulling him off the chaise, kissing messily at his mouth. After a moment, Alec lost his balance, leaning into Richard, and they tumbled to the floor, smacking into the cat in the bargain, who yowled piteously before scrambling off. Richard shifted Alec where they fell, so his pointy knee wouldn't be digging into Richard's thigh anymore. Alec moved to press their hips together, swallowing whatever little noise Richard made.

"Bed," Richard said when he broke away at last.

"No," Alec said. " _Here_."

"I've been on my feet all night; at least let me lie down somewhere comfortable."

"You should buy a nicer rug with the money from this job."

Richard gave him a long look.

Alec sighed. "Well, you always make me do all the work." One of Alec's hands instinctively found a bruise on Richard's hip and pressed into it. He hissed at the pain, low and dull and wonderful.

"Only thing you're good for," Richard said, yawning enormously. "Come on, before I fall asleep."

"Yes, at least wait until you've rolled off me afterward, there's a good boy."

Richard smacked him lightly, and Alec instinctively buried his face into Richard's neck to deflect any subsequent blows. He was grumbling quietly, voice completely muffled, probably continuing to complain. Richard threw an arm around his back, held him there, as if to say: please stay.


End file.
